"Members Only" update delayed again due to "Mandy Moment."

We've had  a few Mandy Moments during the development of Peace Island, so this was nothing new.  If you are not aware of what a “Mandy Moment” is, it's when we encounter a setback in development that prompts me to respond in the manner of Nicolas Cage during the infamous “bathroom scene” in the 2018 film “Mandy.”

Here’s what happened:  On Thursday afternoon, I realized something had gone wrong with sector 7-7-0.  That’s the area of the game world that contains the Island’s church, the tiny park, and a few other smaller locations.

For some reason, it had been spread across the entirety of the game map, as if it had been meticulously disassembled, and scrambled.  Initially, I feared that every sector had been scrambled to the extent that 7-7-0 was, but after a slow and meticulous accounting, we discovered that out of the 22 sectors required for the game:

- 17 were still 100% Beta- ready.
- 1 sector (the aforementioned 7-7-0) required a cursory re-construction.
- 4 sectors had lost all items I had put into them over the past three months.

HOWEVER:  All of those "missing" objects, and their relative locations within the game world, had been saved to other scenes thanks to our policy of redundant backups for EVERY element we add to the game world.

This takes up a LOT of space, but from experience, I KNEW that Perforce (our version control solution) was not perfect, and would eventually fail us.

In the end, only about 6% of the work I had done was actually “lost”.  I would have to say that this set my work personally back by seven days.  As I write this, 80% of the missing content has been restored, and I anticipate finishing the job by tomorrow evening.

On the positive side: this allowed me to do yet another close review of these sectors, and fix more redundant colliders, and improve on previous solutions.

Laura & Lance continued their respective work with nary a hindrance.

Lance implemented a more fluid way of viewing media within the game,  and worked on a revised version of the “Mushroo” behavior.  These had to have their role within the game fully re-written, due to various factors - thankfully, the solution turned out to be far better than our original idea - more about that next week, in the members-only update…

Meanwhile, Laura continued her work on the new skybox. I am really enjoying seeing all of those atmospherics come back in, one by one.. She’s also put in a few extra hours, assisting with the aforementioned recovery.

Shipment of print premiums had to be temporarily paused, due to a lack of funds- we will continue shipments, Tuesday of next week.

Thanks for everyone’s continued support, patience, and confidence- it means the world to us!